In the recent presidential debates both candidates want to have the zinger of a line that everyone is talking about the next day. They both want the final word.

If this were a debate, Paul sums up his point of who Jesus is with the plain statement in verse 19, “For in Him all the fullness of deity was pleased to dwell.”  In 2:9 Paul hits it again, “For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”

Jesus is God.  All the fullness of deity dwells in Him.  Jesus is called the Word in John 1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… [and a little later] And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Hebrews 1:3 “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

What we should take from this teaching about the nature of Jesus is that he is the image of God, the fullest, most visible demonstration of his glory.  If you want to know the invisible God you have to look at the one who has been made flesh who is before all things and through whom all things come together.

Paul sums it all up:  Jesus is preeminent.  Jesus is supreme.  He is the Lord God, having taken on flesh and who made his dwelling among us.  If Jesus is not divine, then work on the cross has no power.  His teaching is no different than any other teaching. But because Jesus is God, his work accomplished salvation and his teaching gives life.

This is part 4 in our series looking at Colossians 1:15-23.

In verse 16 we read about Jesus, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.”

The Bible is the progressive revelation of God to his people, how he made for himself a people that were set apart, delivering them and ultimately taking on flesh to redeem them from sin.  God in His wisdom saw fit to progressively reveal truth about himself to his people.  He gave them what they needed to know about him when they needed it.   What we learn in this passage that had not been previously revealed is that the Son was the agent through which all things were created.   Not only does this show that Jesus is not part of creation, but that he possesses the power of God and that all things created are for Him. Not only is Jesus the origin of our salvation.  He is the origin of all things.

But there is more, at verse 17, “He is before all things and in him all things hold together.”  He created and he sustains.  He keeps the universe functioning the way it has been created.  In Him all things hold together! Jesus is the beginning and the end.  In verse 18 we see that he is the head of the body, the church.  He not only created and but he redeems a people, he is supreme over all and sustains his people just as he does the creation all around them.

Did you notice how many times “all things” is repeated in these verses from 15-20?  Five times in the first few verses.  Paul wants us to know that there is nothing that is outside of the sovereign creating, sustaining control of Jesus.  This should tell us is Jesus must be the central point of our faith because Jesus is the central figure in the universe, the creator and sustainer.  The teachers that could have been tempting the Colossians to move past Jesus into a greater spiritual knowledge didn’t know what they were talking about!  All things were pointing to Jesus and they wanted to point to some trite experience that was supposed to make Jesus bigger and better?  He can’t get any better!  He is enough!

The false teachers that could have been wanting them to experience the fulness of God in a greater way apart from Christ were in fact robbing Christ of his glory.

Read Colossians 1:15-23

Paul writes in verse 15, “He is the firstborn over all creation” and then a little farther down in verse 18, He is “the firstborn from the dead.”  Now all sorts of heresies have arisen and tried to take being the firstborn over all creation as proof texts.  Arius in the fourth century taught that this meant that Jesus had been created.  The controversy with Arius gave rise to the council of Chalcedon meeting to define the essential nature of Christ,  “eternally begotten of the Father, … begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.”  One person with two natures, human and divine.

One way we know that Paul is wanting us to understand “firstborn” is because there would be a whole different word in greek if Paul wanted to communicate he was the “first created.”   Also, Psalm 89 uses this same word, firstborn, as a messianic title.  So for Jesus to be firstborn is a way to communicate that he is like the firstborn son of a king who has sovereign authority.

But in just a few verses, Paul brings out the same word referring to the resurrection.  That Jesus is the beginning “the firstborn from the dead.”  Hebrews tells us that Jesus is the founder and perfecter of our faith, because he conquered death which has locked humanity in it’s grips.  He is the first to conquer death because he is supreme over death.  Death could not hold him, or as the old hymn put it, “Death in vain forbids him rise! Christ has opened paradise!”

What this tells us is that Jesus, though he took on human flesh, is unique in that he is also fully divine.  He is supreme over creation because he is lord of creation. He is supreme over death and death couldn’t stop him.

It is impossible to take Jesus as simply a good human teacher or a moral man or a prophet because teachers and prophets don’t hold the keys to life and to death.  They are not supreme.  Jesus is.

Read Colossians 1:15-23

Paul writes that “he [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God.”  Now if you remember back, we said about the nature of God that He is Spirit, One God eternally existing in three persons.  God the Son never had a beginning, but as God has always existed.  In Colossians, Paul starts by drawing our attention to the fact that he is the image of God.  John Frame says it like this, ““God, who has no body, has taken to himself a body in the person of Jesus Christ. God, who cannot suffer, has taken to himself a human nature, in which he can suffer, in Christ.”^? We were made in the image of God, to reflect his likeness.  Jesus is the image of God.

God the Son, who has always existed, took on flesh and entered into humanity in order to be the visible manifestation of God that men and women could talk to and touch and hear and see.  The greek word behind image here is “eikonos” which is where we get the word icon.  Other religions have icons or idols that they set up and carve and bow down before whether they believe that it is actually God or if it is a picture of what God looks like.

But when God revealed himself in the Bible to the people of God in the Old Testament, he expressly forbade them from making graven images of Him because none could do justice to his nature and character.  And even more so, since Jesus taking on flesh was planned from all time, we could say that one reason God did not allow images because He himself was going to image himself to the people.  John 1:1  In the beginning was the Word, And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  God would do far better than giving them a golden image or painting of himself.  He would take on flesh and walk among them.

Over the next few posts, we’re going to look at what Colossians 1:15-23 tells us about the nature of Christ.  But before we jump in, let’s remind ourselves about what these Christians in Colossae are struggling with and why Paul is writing to them.  It’s a church that has been planted by someone other than Paul, in a town that has seen it’s better days.  It is in decline as new commerce and roads took people away from it.  Maybe like a modern day Detroit or Pittsburgh.  And in this young church that has never seen Paul face to face he is concerned that they need to be reminded about truth about who Jesus is, not necessarily because  he’s  worried that they are going to turn back to Judaism or Pagan religions, but because he’s concerned for them being drawn astray from false teachers within the church who were somehow minimizing the person of Christ and pointing to a greater “fulness” that they could achieve by religious experience.

Minimizing Christ by downplaying an aspect of his character or overemphasizing or exaggerating his teachings or adding to him is always the danger that Christians face in every generation.  That we would begin to press Jesus into the mold of the spirit of our age.    That we would in effect say, sure, that’s great teaching about Jesus, but if you don’t really understand “this” about Jesus then you don’t understand the full picture of what it means to be a Christian.

For us today, the pictures of Jesus are many;  some would want to take the edge off Jesus and make him more tolerant or put his focus merely on poverty or social unrest.  To make him into a civil rights leader or into a guru.  The temptation is to make Jesus appeal to different segments of the population by making Jesus look and sound like them.  To rebels we make him a rebel and talk as if should he have come today he would have come with a killer tat and wearing black leather.  To  environmentalists to present him as wearing hemp sandals and chaining himself to trees.  That he would be occupying wall street or endorsing a certain political candidate.  The temptation from every age is to press Jesus into a mold of our own making that reflects the spirit of the current age.  The genteel Jesus.  The victorian Jesus.  The manly Jesus / the feminine Jesus.  Every time we do this, we make an image of Jesus that actually misleads people  and draws them away from who Jesus actually is.

Over the next few posts we’ll look at the nature of who Jesus really is from Colossians 1:15-23.

Philippians 4:8 “Whatever is commendable…think about these things”

When Paul is encouraging us to think on what is commendable, we are being encouraged to think about that which receives good reports or is well spoken of, that is highly regarded.  This is the classic, good / best distinction.  There are lots of things that we could think about that are good, but are they the best?

Are we setting our minds on the excellent, the best or on just the average and good?  As Christians, to be thinking about Christ, and thinking about what is commendable is to be having our minds set on the best things, the most praiseworthy.  DA Carson says it this way, “One of the sovereign remedies against sin is to spend much time, thoughtful time, meditative time, in the Scriptures, for it is impossible to get rid of the trash in our minds without replacing it with an entirely different way of thinking.”

If Jesus is the most highly exalted one, then any time spent contemplating and considering why he is the best will be richly rewarded by the fruit of apprehending truth about him that enables us to value him more and praise him more.  We replace the trashy and even what is merely good with the best, which is knowing God in Christ.

And deepening in appreciation and praise of God gives him great praise. It glorifies God when we commend him and praise him in our thoughts.  When we are esteeming him highly.  The fruit of growing in our estimation of Christ is that we get to enjoy more of him and understand him more because we are showing Him to be best.  To be supreme.

Philippians 4:8 “Whatever is lovely…think about these things.”

When Paul calls for us to think about “whatever is lovely” another way of saying it is “that which inspires love.”  The most love inspiring love with which anyone can be loved is the love of Christ.  In that way, Jesus is the most beautiful and lovely object we can ever set our minds upon. We’re not trying to envision Christ physically, and think about his face and dwell on his beauty.  If you remember, the prophecies before Christ and the way the people rejected him on earth showed that we thought him anything less than beautiful, not lovely at all in appearance.  “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him…He was despised and rejected by men.  A man of sorrows.” (Isaiah 53:2,3)

The loveliness or beauty of Christ comes not from his physical appearance but through what he has done. What makes Christ lovely is his how he has demonstrated the Father’s love.  He has shown us great love, and shared this love with us so that his love should inspire our thinking to love others. It is the selfless demonstration of Christ’s love that inspires our thinking to be unbound in terms of what love is and what is lovely. But as we think about what is lovely in light of the love of Christ, I think it helps us to see examples.

I’m inspired to think about the love of Christ when I see someone pouring out their lives for others at great cost to themselves. To think about what is lovely is probably best done by watching a Christian demonstrate love and by the very fact of watching that love be expressed, you are understanding more about the love of Christ.

To dwell on that which is lovely is to dwell on those things that are inspired by the love of Christ.

Philippians 4:8 “Whatever is pure…think about these things.”

The holiness of God is his absolute purity.  God has never been for a moment anything but completely pure.  He is infinitely holy.  There is no sin in Him.  Jesus is holy as the Father is Holy and the Spirit is Holy.

The holiness of God is truth that should strike fear into the hearts of those who are not holy.  Isaiah said, ‘Woe is me.  I am a man of unclean lips and dwell among a people of unclean lips.”  We have no ground to stand on, but we don’t see the horror of our sin compared to God’s holiness.  Especially in our thoughts, it’s easy to live in our private fantasy worlds where we get the respect we want, or revenge we should have taken or pleasure we desire.

Tim Keller gives a good picture of our sin when he writes, “Imagine that for one day everything you did and even everything you thought was put up on a monitor, and every image of your mind for a day was recorded, and you didn’t know it so you just had your regular day. The next day it is put up all around the world on the Internet, on YouTube, twenty-four hours of your thought life. What would happen? You would die of shame.

Then what would it be like to actually appear before God, with all the excuses, all the self-denials, all the things that you have ever said to try to justify your self-absorption, your self-centeredness, your cruelty—all the things that are in your life that you have used to excuse and justify the way in which you live—but suddenly, they all fall off because you know God is seeing you all the way to the bottom? What hope is there?”

If someone answers that their hope is in any way tied to what they have done, they don’t understand the holiness of God. If someone thinks for a moment that they will stand before God, and hold up their righteousness before His holiness and be acceptable they don’t understand the separation their sin brings before this holy God, that they are filthy before his absolute purity.

As Christians now, Colossians tells us that we are holy (Colossians 3:12) present tense!  Though we are holy, we are still in the process of becoming holy in the way we think and act and live.  We are holy in the sight of God through Christ, and we are becoming holy.  The way we are to think then, isn’t in the impure, filthy ways we once did, but in line with who we are now.

Here is my encouragement to you in how you might think on whatever is pure or holy.  Do so from the mindset of having already been made clean by the blood of Christ, not as one who is just hopeful you can clean yourself up enough. The person who has that mindset just wants to know the bare minimum to get by.  You are holy because Jesus, the Holy One has made you clean through his blood. Although we’re already holy in God’s sight, we’re also becoming holy as we walk through this world.  And you will one day step into a land that is holy, with no sin present to enjoy God forever.

Philippians 4:8 “Whatever is just…think about these things.”

Just, justice, righteous, righteousness all come from the same root word in greek.  In Philippians 4:8 Paul is not using the term in a specialized theological way, but in the broadest possible sense as “those who live according to the divine standard.” (O’Brian) To have a just measurement or weight is to have one that conforms to the standard.  To love what is just and to think about what is just is to think about things that are righteous according to the standard of God.

Jesus is perfectly just.  He always lived according to God’s standard.  He was always righteous and never deviated from the standard of righteousness.   We’re not righteous in our natural, sinful state.  Romans tells us that there is no one righteous, no not one.

But not only is Jesus just, but he is the justifier.  Through Jesus we are justified before God.  We meet the standard God requires, not because we attained it, but because Jesus provided His righteousness to us by grace through faith.

So now as Christians, to think about whatever is just or righteous is to uphold that which is righteous in God’s sight.  To seek to have his standard for what is just and righteous be our standard. To cling personally and tell others that the only standard for righteousness is found in Christ alone.  If we want to be Christ-centered in our thinking, we need to be constantly reminding ourselves where our righteousness comes from, thinking about the righteousness of Christ that is now ours. That our thinking would be according to the standard of God’s righteousness.  That we would uphold the Son as the Father makes known the Son.

Philippians 4:8  ”Whatever is honorable…think about these things.”

The word Paul uses in Philippians 4:8 which is translated, “honorable” in the ESV is elsewhere in the New Testament translated “dignified.”  Outside of scripture It speaks of royalty and majestic thrones.  Something which points to a higher order.

When we are called to set our minds on that which is honorable, we need to look to the One who is most worthy of honor. Christ is honorable because he is majestic; He is king.  He is one whose kingdom will never end, who has no enemy who will not be subdued, the one who is in control of all things.  There is no one like Him in majesty or splendor. He is king!

It would follow, then, that our thoughts should be fit for a king.  Our thoughts reflect what is honoring to the King. When a ruler, a king, enters a room the common, everyday things cease and that ruler has everyone’s full attention.  People stand or bow.  They don’t keep talking on their cell phones or filing their nails.  Like one commentator writes, to think like this is to think on “things that lift the mind from the cheap and tawdry to that which is noble and good and of moral worth.^?” (Hanson, The Letter to the Philippians. The Pillar New Testament Commentary p.297)

Elsewhere, when Paul speaks of Elders and Deacons and older women being “dignified”  in the pastoral letters, he’s not just talking about their exterior appearance.  If you want to be dignified or honorable in your thinking you don’t just put on a tweed jacket.  You become a person who dwells on that which is worth most. You grow in valuing the person and worth of Christ.   You minimize the trite things that could fill your mind, and you seek to meditate on the splendor of the King.

C.S. Lewis said it well in his book the weight of glory, “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

We have the majestic to dwell on and we are fine with mud pies.  To think about that which is honorable and noble things is to cultivate an appetite for what is honorable and noble. If we tasted and saw how good the majesty and splendor of God was, we would never want to be slumming in our minds again. We seek out truth in God’s word that flows from the sweet gospel and we delight in those kingdom truths.